What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Think hard about what this article is saying for a moment. Think hard about the candidates and the description of the campaigns. See if you can identify the problem here.

Rival hopes anti-Bush tide will sink Schwarzenegger

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - In a state where Democrats far outnumber Republicans and President George W. Bush has never been popular, an experienced Democrat should be in a strong position to unseat Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yet Schwarzenegger, the former Mr. Universe and Hollywood "Terminator," has dominated headlines in recent months and taken a strong lead in polls over his Democratic challenger after losing a special 2005 referendum election.

"I knew when I got into that I was running against a mega-celebrity, a global action hero," the Democratic candidate, State Treasurer Phil Angelides, told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

"It's a tough race," he continued. "But look, the kind of ordeal I'm going through is nothing compared to the ordeal millions of Californian families have gone through under the leadership of George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Angelides, a Harvard University-educated former real estate developer, has worked on winning support for years in California where 42 percent of voters are registered Democrats and 34 percent Republicans.

He has maintained a steady message of linking Schwarzenegger with Bush and criticizing the former bodybuilder, who has served nearly three years in office.

Yet Angelides grew testy when asked whether he was having troubling getting his message across to voters. "Are you kidding?" he said at his campaign headquarters. "That was pretty offensive."

"They're on the campaign trail every day," he said of his family's efforts. "We're out there every day."

….

Even if poll numbers are now against him, Angelides is looking for a rise on a tide of anti-Bush sentiment by the November vote. "I'm going to win because all across this country this is going to be a rejection of the policies of George Bush, the policies that Arnold Schwarzenegger has pursued in California," he said.

Now, frankly, it could be the reporting here. I think everyone should be able to agree that reporting can be a bit spotty these days, with agendas creeping in on a routine basis. But consider the quotes. Angelides is not running for the office. He is running against Bush and Schwarzenegger. In that order.

Do you not see the problem with that strategy?

QUAGMIRE!

This is now, officially, a quagmire. There is no escaping it, the facts are there for the entire world to see. The body count stands at over 150 civilians each and every day dying in the senseless violence. 24/7/365. Over 55,000 in the last year alone. This must end at once. There is absolutely no hope of rescuing the situation. We must unilaterally withdraw all our troops, RIGHT NOW! Er. Um. Wait a second. Never mind.

We don't have any troops in Brazil.

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - More than 150 Brazilians were murdered each day last year on average, putting Brazil on a par with some war zones in terms of its homicide rate, the Justice Ministry said on Monday.

Some 55,000 Brazilians died of homicide in 2005 — a few thousand more civilians than in three years of war in Iraq, according to leading estimates.

Brazil, a continent-sized nation of 185 million people starkly divided into rich and poor, has had notoriously high crime rates for years. Millions of poor live in urban slums and unpoliced rural areas where guns are easy to come by.

Though the murder rate is high, Marcelo Durante, coordinator of the Justice Ministry's report, said homicides have fallen slowly in recent years thanks in part to an initiative to collect guns from the streets.

Citizens have voluntarily turned in thousands of weapons in places like Rio de Janeiro, the famous beachside city whose urban slums have some of the highest crime rates in Brazil.

A referendum in 2005 to ban gun sales failed, in part because some voters had lost faith in police.

(Note for the Clueproof™. This post is not - in any way - meant to make light of the situation in Iraq. It is meant to provide some sort of perspective.)

I Feel So Much Safer - Don’t You?

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assures us that there is no truth to the rumors that Iran is actively trying to acquire atomic weapons. Because everything in the Iranian program is under the ever-vigilant eye of the IAEA. You know. These guys.

Jihlava, South Moravia, Sept 23 (CTK) - A US commissioner from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) emerged unharmed after falling into a water tank at the Dukovany nuclear power plant on Friday.

The daily Mlada fronta Dnes reported Friday that commissioners training at the facility were moving around the plant in a group. One of them, however, left the group and fell into the tank.

The water in the tank was not radioactive.

A spokesman for the plant told MfD that the commissioner admitted he had made a mistake. "The rules say that no one is allowed to leave the group," the spokesman said.

The water tank is used in the process of loading and unloading nuclear fuel. Although the water was not in contact with any nuclear fuel during the training, the commissioner was examined to make sure he was not contaminated with radioactivity.

H/T Environmental Republican.

Well, I Guess We Know What Today’s Theme Has Been

I've noted before that some of the more, shall we say, odd stories I find out there seem to come in groups. Usually, but by no means always, in threes, for whatever reason. Today, the grouping seems to have been on a common theme: unusual things to eat. First it was cockroaches, then deep-fried crickets and finally something that made deep-fried crickets sound pretty good, relatively speaking. But today a fourth taste sensation has surfaced. This one will really whet your appetite, too.

Bat tea.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - A western Iowa woman is recovering from the shock of finding a drowned bat in her tea mug — after she sipped from the cup all day.

The brown bat, about the size of two tea bags, was found a few weeks ago by a 60-year-old Woodbury County woman, said Chuck Cipperley, an environmental director for the Siouxland health office in Sioux City.

"I knew the person, so I knew it was no joke," said Cipperley, who took the call from the woman.

The woman, who declined to identify herself, told Cipperley she found the bat when she was cleaning out the mug at night. She said she put the bat in a plastic bag before alerting the Siouxland health office the next morning.

The, um, beverage, tested negative for rabies so at least the woman didn't have the added bonus of rabies shots. Kind of makes your skin crawl doesn't it?

Bwahahaha. Oh. Sorry. (I'm going to have to save this one for the Halloween special……)

Why Lieberman Has It Right

Joe Lieberman gave a speech today to the VFW in Connecticut. It was both a campaign speech and a call for unity. Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or how, why or when it occurred, it is important, I think to read his words on a couple of issues.

EAST HAMPTON, Conn. — Sen. Joe Lieberman argued on Monday that anti-war rival Ned Lamont's call for a troop withdrawal timeline in Iraq is "doomed to fail" and could leave the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism.

"The clear choice before Connecticut's voters in this campaign is Ned Lamont's plan for giving up on Iraq and my plan for getting the job done there," Lieberman said in a speech at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post.

….

"The Lamont plan for immediate withdrawal and an arbitrary deadline is doomed to fail and weaken our security," Lieberman said. "It will leave our troops more vulnerable to attack while they remain, and will leave Iraq to become a failed state and a terrorist breeding ground when were gone."

….

The senator also urged both sides to find common ground on the war.

"We have to realize that reasonable people can disagree on this difficult question, and that does not make you a terrorist sympathizer, on the one hand, or a warmonger, on the other," the senator said.

Lieberman has been a staunch defender of the war, but he has criticized Bush officials for lacking an effective plan to win the peace, for not putting enough troops on the ground and for failing to win allied support before the war.

A long time ago (in blog time) I wrote about "The Last Helicopter". There is a strategy at work here. The terrorists have a plan. Make the war just costly enough that America pulls out precipitously. This will give them enormous clout for recruiting and a major propaganda victory. Much has been made about the leaked portions of the National Intelligence Estimate. What is not being said by supporters of an immediate pullout is what the consequences of such a move would be. They would be a disaster for this country, pure and simple. I have been warning that the continued - continuous - attacks on the administration not only damage Bush. They damage America.

I do not agree with everything Lieberman proposes as new directions, but I agree wholeheartedly with this:

"We have to realize that reasonable people can disagree on this difficult question, and that does not make you a terrorist sympathizer, on the one hand, or a warmonger, on the other".

What you cannot be is a supporter of a precipitous pullout without recognizing the incredible amount of damage you would do to the country in the long run.

Launch Fails

The UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL rocket launched today in New Mexico failed to attain altitude, spiraling out of control at about 40,000 feet. The company hopes to salvage the payload since the failed rocket landed within the same valley the launch facility is in.

The UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL rocket, which organizers had hoped would usher in a new era of cheap public access to space, blasted off from Spaceport America, a remote desert launch site near the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

It slewed off course 40,000 feet above ground due to a malfunction.

"Because of an unexpected aerodynamic effect, the vehicle was short of its effected range, it went to an altitude of 40,000 feet," a mission director said over a public address system said.

The Connecticut-based company aims to become the first offering public access to space at accessible prices, with payloads priced from a few hundred dollars for small items weighing a few grams (ounces).

Pity. Better luck next time.

The Animal Uprising Takes A Really Nasty Turn

It's not bad enough that we have alligators pretending to be doormats. There is not enough terror already with thirsty, under-aged, sunburned, bald seals invading up and down the East coast. It's not even enough that we have drunken bears waving slices of barbecue chicken and jalapeño pizza at Cindy Sheehan. (Ok, we exaggerated a little on that last one.) But up until now it has only been the live animals involved. Now it is the toy animals and they are killing their own! Murderous teddy bears crazed with blood lust.

MILFORD, N.H. - A teddy bear has been implicated in 2,500 deaths. Of trout, that is. State officials say a teddy bear dropped into a pool at a Fish and Game Department hatchery earlier this month clogged a drain. The clog blocked the flow of oxygen to the pool and suffocated the fish.

Hatcheries supervisor Robert Fawcett said the bear — who was dressed in yellow raincoat and hat — is believed to be the first stuffed bear to cause fatalities at the facility.

"We've had pipes get clogged, but it's usually with more naturally occurring things like a frog or even a dead muskrat," he said. "This one turned out to be a teddy bear and we don't know how it got there."

The deaths prompted Fawcett to release a written warning: "RELEASE OF ANY TEDDY BEARS into the fish hatchery water IS NOT PERMITTED."

(We could have written that sign!) This is a bad sign……

Backfire

When the controversy first erupted over the ABC "docudrama" The Path to 9/11, I wrote that I thought Clinton and his defenders had made a horrible miscalculation. I still do. I think, however, that Bill Clinton made an even worse one in his appearance on Fox News Sunday. I don't think I have been particularly hard on Clinton, certainly not as hard as a lot of his critics. I have pointed out that every administration starting with Jimmy Carter has made mistakes in dealing with terrorists and rogue states. Carter I think deserves a lot of blame for his role in the virulent spread of terror as a political tool, but that's another discussion.

But Clinton, by going off as he did on Wallace, hurt himself and his legacy rather badly, I think. It got much, much worse for him this morning, as a direct result of his appearance.

On Monday's "Early Show", co-host Harry Smith talked with Scheuer about the war in Iraq and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Smith was shocked when Scheuer laid the blame at the feet of the Clinton administration, and attempted to put the focus back on failures of the Bush Administration. Smith highlighted president Clinton's defense of his administration:

"Let's talk about what President Clinton had to say on Fox yesterday. He basically laid blame at the feet of the CIA and the FBI for not being able to certify or verify that Osama bin Laden was responsible for a number of different attacks. Does that ring true to you?"

Scheuer refuted Smith’s portrayal of Clinton:

"No, sir, I don't think so. The president seems to be able, the former president seems to be able to deny facts with impunity. Bin Laden is alive today because Mr. Clinton, Mr. Sandy Berger, and Mr. Richard Clarke refused to kill him. That's the bottom line. And every time he says what he said to Chris Wallace on Fox, he defames the CIA especially, and the men and women who risk their lives to give his administration repeated chances to kill bin Laden."

Smith couldn’t let these facts tarnish the Clinton legacy, so he attempted to change the subject back to the Bush Administration:

"All right, is the Bush administration any less responsible for not finishing the job in Tora Bora?"

Scheuer acknowledged that there is plenty of blame to go around for not getting bin Laden, but asserted that Clinton bears most of it:

"Oh, I think there's plenty of blame to go around, sir, but the fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration had one chance that they botched, and the Clinton Administration had eight to ten chances that they refused to try…"

This one hurt - a lot. This morning show probably has a substantially larger audience than Fox News Sunday (that's a guess with no research to back it up). More important though, is that the audience for this show are not political junkies. Clinton did this to himself with first his over-the-top attacks on ABC then this ill-advised, televised temper tantrum.

UPDATE: And a contrarian view from William Kristol. Did Clinton do it on purpose?

Iran Wants Russians To Finish Reactor

Iran wants the Russians to finish building the Bushehr reactor project right now. Or they say they will finish it themselves. This does not bode well for the negotiations underway with the EU, I suspect.

"In the event that the Russian contractor proves incapable of completing the Bushehr project, Iran is ready to finish it itself," the head of Iran's nuclear energy organization Gholamreza Aghazadeh told Iranian journalists after Moscow talks.

"From our point of view, we can complete the power station within six months," Aghazadeh told the semi-official Mehr news agency, denying reports of an agreement with Russia for a November 2007 completion date.

The Iranian envoy launched a strong attack on the competence of Russian contractor Atomstroyexport which is building the power plant but said Iran would continue to work with it for the time being.

Before the Moscow talks began, Iranian officials said that the meetings were aimed at finalizing plans for the delivery of nuclear fuel and the startup of the Bushehr plant.

"We are going to discuss ways to remove existing obstacles by quickly completing the Bushehr atomic plant and also we are going to agree the time of inauguration and sending the fuel," Aghazadeh's deputy, Mohammad Saeedi, told Iran's official IRNA news agency.

Saeedi complained that Russia had not followed through on commitments made last year on schedules for delivery of nuclear fuel, fuel that must be shipped and installed around six months before the plant can go on stream.

Although Russia had a longstanding contract worth an estimated one billion dollars to build the Bushehr reactor, it has been under heavy US-led pressure to suspend or slow its cooperation with the Islamic republic, which Washington accuses of trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Even if the reactor is built, there is the problem of fueling the unit. I have no idea if Iran has the infrastructure to perform fuel fabrication. It requires a lot of know-how and industrial capability to actually make the fuel assemblies. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, however, given the advanced enrichment program.

The Mother Of All Smear Jobs

I mentioned the hit piece in Salon earlier. There have been a lot of people who have jumped on this one (Dan Riehl dug up some inconvenient information on the person Salon based the story on.) But the Allen campaign is really hitting back on this one. They are saying the whole thing is originating from the Webb campaign. I have no idea if that particular charge is true, but there is something very, very ugly about how this stuff keeps getting into play. Read the point by point from Allen's campaign. Then go read Dan Riehl's information.

This one is really very ugly. We are seeing some very, very nasty stuff in this election cycle. We really do not need this.

UPDATE: And now it's become trying to put the smoke back into the bottle. AP has picked up the allegations by Shelton. The also printed Allen's vehement denials, but this kind of ugliness is already out there now.

UPDATE: Others: Captain Ed, Powerline, Beltway Blogroll, Decision '08, STACLU, Redstate, Ace of Spades,

Just So MSN IM Users Don’t Feel Left Out

I posted last week about a security flaw in AOL's Instant Messaging program that was spreading trojans like wildfire. Well, the hackers didn't want Microsoft IM users to feel left out apparently. MSN IM users have their very own security flaw that is being exploited.

Russian anti-virus and security vendor Kaspersky wrote Friday about an increase in spyware attacks on MSN Messenger users, an attack that succeeds in part due to a flaw in Microsoft's approach to blocking transfers of certain types of malicious files.

Last week, two out of three of the most active worms spread over MSN's instant messenger program, according to Kaspersky Labs. Microsoft at some point configured its Messenger network to block transfers of files ending in ".pif," responding to a rash of viruses, worms and trojans that disguised themselves as .pif images. By doing so, Microsoft sought to halt the progress of IM worms that spread rapidly to each of a victim's contacts after the recipient clicks on an exploit-laced Web link.

So why was Kaspersky saying new infections from the two MSN IM worms were "peaking above the radar to an extent you can probably call epidemic levels"? According to Kaspersky, both MSN worms that surfaced this week had devised an inscrutable guise for their exploits — they came masked as ".PIF" files.

It turns out the "fix" MSN applied is case sensitive. Whoops. I personally refuse to use IM programs at all. For just this reason.

Still More On The Arizona “9/11 Memorial”

AllahPundit has all the inscriptions now. Frankly, these are pretty disturbing. There are things here that stink of moral equivalence and a "blame America" attitude. It is very sad to see this.

A million thanks to AZ Patriot, who did yeoman’s work for us today by heading over there and snapping these pics. I think this is the whole series but I’m not sure; he hasn’t responded to my e-mail yet.

Here they are, in sequence. I’ve made the “interesting” ones full size. The rest are clickable thumbnails. One of the full size images towards the end having to do with “terrorist organizations” got cut off. Hopefully AZP will stop by and tell us what the full inscription says. Bear in mind as you go that the memorial’s website describes it thusly:

Arizona’s September 11th Memorial will be built at Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza located directly in front of the Capitol Mall so that future generations will not forget the tragic losses of life and the inspiration, heroism and lessons learned that day. This monument to those who died, served and rallied to the cause, will be a worthy and lasting education symbol to remind us of how our great State came together in the face of adversity.

Mary K has a comprehensive post about this. Don’t miss that either.

EspressoPundit continues to be all over this as well. In fact, he appears to be heading for television.

THIS Officially Makes Deep-Fried Cricket Sound Good

The writer of the BBC story even mentions eating deep-fried cricket at one point in his career. But somehow, I really don't think this is going to catch on anytime soon:

A penis restaurant.

No, really. That's what they serve. You'll have to go over there to read about it. I have absolutely no idea where to begin excerpting that one. But the BBC sent somebody to write an article about this place. Urk.

Fade To Black?

Is MSNBC about to go under? Or at least cease to exist as a 24 hour news channel? Speculation is that it may do just that in the near future. The channel has been the perennial cellar-dweller in the ratings pretty much forever, so something has got to give.

Word is that the perennial also-ran in cable news is considering the possibility of virtually dropping out of the live-news business and devoting itself entirely to taped, newsmagazine-style programming —much of it likely repurposed from NBC News. In other words, “The Dateline: NBC Channel.”

That’s just one option under consideration. But that such a drastic idea is even on the table speaks volumes about the state of the cable news business.

If such a modification occurs, it would certainly mean changes for MSNBC’s business-news sibling, CNBC. One scenario has successful MSNBC personalities Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann moving their respective acts to CNBC in the hopes of turbo-charging its ratings-challenged primetime. In this case, NBC News still would have both channels at its disposal should it want to go live 24/7 in the event of a terrorist attack or a major natural disaster.

Whether NBC News will choose such a dramatic course of action is a subject of debate in the industry. Naysayers argue that the challenge of transforming MSNBC into a newsmag channel doesn’t make sense from either a production or an economic standpoint. Indeed, the cost of such a transformation would fly in the face of NBC’s efforts to wring tens of millions of dollars in cuts out of the news division.

Interesting. It seems overall viewership for all of the 24/7 news channels has been sliding in the past year. So it is beginning to look like some sort of shakeup may indeed come true fairly soon.

Diplomatic Street Theater

I seems that the little "ruckus" that supposedly occurred at Kennedy Airport involving the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, may have been substantially less that Hugo Chavez made it out to be. All the reports I read over the weekend about this incident quoted extensively from Chavez and the FM. John Bolton today told reporters that what they had been told was not at all what happened.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro was detained for a short time at John F. Kennedy airport on his way home after attending the U.N. General Assembly, where President Hugo Chavez called President Bush "the devil."

Speaking on Venezuelan television, Maduro denounced the U.S. government for "violating international law," and a U.S. State Department spokesman apologized on Saturday.

But U.S. envoy John Bolton made no apologies on Monday when asked about the detention: "There was no incident at the airport. This was Venezuelan street theater," he told reporters.

"He did not request the courtesies we would have extended to get him through the airport," Bolton said.

"He purchased his ticket at a time and in a manner and with funding such that he was asked to go to secondary screening and he objected to that, and the first thing he did was call the press and speak to them in Spanish."

Something about the whole incident as reported earlier sounded wrong since authorities at Kennedy are very well versed in handling diplomats. This does sound like a setup and a big act.